Press Kit

Willmore Works
601 W. 110th St. #5R
New York, NY 10025

212-222-6150 voice • 212-222-6156 fax
E-mail: nikwillmore@gmail.com

Artist Nik Willmore presents his first series of lighting sculptures. This series began when he realized that adding some electronics to his fine art sculptures would be a fun thing to do. This thrust him into the design world, since a design shop seems like a better outlet than a show in an art gallery. Innovative chairs and tables are in the works.

A reproduction of our print brochure and ad copy is included below so please scroll down.

High resolultion images are here: http://www.e-dot.com/PressKit/HighResolutionImages/
Included are the following:

Nik Willmore Portraits:

  

The Gear Clock ($35 retail), The Hands of Time ($24 retail), and The Organiclock ($27 retail):

The Qube ($68 retail):

The Space Frames (His or Hers, $34 retail for 3"X3" picture size, $22 retail for 1.5"X1.5" picture size):

The Lulu Lamp ($68 retail):

The Brain ($450 retail):
 
See The Pedestal below to convert The Brain into a floor lamp.

The Bulbohedron ($325 retail):
 

The Glow Bug ($225 retail) and The Floor Spike Kit ($65 retail):
  

The Glow Bug Pendant ($165 retail) and The Buckminster Superstar ($1250 retail):

The Brain Pendant ($350 retail):

 

The Buckminster Superstar and Grand Central Station (both $1250 retail):

  

The Glow Bug Pendant festooned over ceiling hooks and connected to a matchine wall dimmer:

Grand Central Station ($1250 retail):

Prometheus ($650 retail) and The Pedestal ($95 retail):
 
 

The Structuresticks (Foursome $85, Solo $48, Lucky Seven $125):
 

Fantasy in Scarlet and Black

”When I lay eyes on Dr. Nik’s Structuresticks my mind lights up, for contained within the airy boundaries of these exotic sculptures are a lifetime of romantic symbolism. Like a schoolgirl making up stories, the cherry marbles become my beating heart, safely locked up in some Don Juan’s castle. With caged desire I play hard to get but then suddenly the black scaffolded sticks become a titanium skyscraper, thrusting into the clouds in Utopia where the men are all geniuses and the women forever young. I don red lipstick and a little black dress. My date arrives in a black limo and black suit and we take the elevator to dine in the sky. As the candles become rockets I catch myself daydreaming.”

A Study in Decorative Science

Spires of Bakelite composite are computer cut in Dr. Nik’s NYC studio and the 2D parts are modularly assembled into a 3D structure. Every detail from the glass balls that add necessary mass to the ergonomic handles arise from functional requirements, guided by Nik’s intuition and background in designing complex molecules from only a few basic units.

I Came. I Saw. I Consumed.

“When I got home the choice of candles was obvious. Red! I love the way the wine colored globes become little TV screens, each containing a rose tinted black and white movie of my room as I saunter by. I got a Foursome but had to grab a Solo as well since the cute little thing converts into a bud vase too! A single rose now cheers me up all day long. I love carrying the candelabra around by its stalk like I live in a castle. When I got carried away and dripped some wax it fell on the bobeche (”bow-besh”) dishes, which are easy to clean.”

The Structurestick Solo includes a test tube to convert it into a bud vase:
 

The Tube Lamp ($275 retail):
 

Feel free to use some of the following ad copy from our printed brochure:

Art: The Hidden Beauty of Common Things

Light, as embodied in the sun, lightening, and fire has been revered by man since antiquity. When light bulbs, a product of modern industry, are energized with a subtle flow of electrons, they seize you with a glowing ambience of primordial invention. Geometrically arrayed to fill space, light bulbs become the wildest things you’ve ever seen.

Design With a Capital ‘D’

Scientist turned artist Nik Willmore presents his new light sculptures. Living with one, you appreciate the deep intelligence not of the designer, but of Nature itself. Nothing is arbitrary in their design. They flow from first principles and functional parameters, not a sense of styling. Beautiful as roses are beautiful: form follows function. Not retro, but made with a retro attitude: one of old world progress and optimism, as well as the search for meaning through art.

Spiritual Illumination

Switch it on and your soul is exposed to the mysterious and inspiring world of atomic excitation and blackbody radiation, ejecting a warm photonic glow, from intricately glass-blown marvels of science and engineering (light bulbs). The overall, close-up effect effect is frighteningly beautiful. You control the mood (not just the light level) from “candlelight” to “bedtime reading” to “romantic,” all the way up to “party” level. Lots of bulbs give lots of light.

Choose from an array psychoactive and yet calmingly sensuous products. From the mysteriously cute little Bulbohedron, to the happy nuclear charm of Prometheus, a mad scientist's neural network (The Brain), or the haughty gloss black of The Tube Lamp.

The Bulbohedron:

Better Living Through Geometry

When your friends see it, they’ll think it’s a satellite, a molecule, a virus, jewels, or an electric flower. Watch as they experience what is not just a cool lamp, but an insanely cool presence. An awesome party light, giving off a warm glow, like candles. You’ll use it for personal mood lighting, daily, since the bulbs will rarely, if ever, burn out. And my world, Watson, just look at it! Why turn it off? A great nightlight, still visible as a delicate electric gem in direct sunlight. You don‘t turn off a sculpture. You have just become an art patron.

D Four Three Eight Three Three Zero S

That’s its US Patent number. Look closely. Your Bulbohedron uses a single metal part, repeated 30 times, assembled into a shell using 120 rivets. They’re made in Nik’s New York City Studio using computer-controlled machine tools, and assembled by hand. Brass, stainless steel, aluminum, Bakelite and glass, packed with electronics too, including the sexy surgical stainless steel dimmer knob, right on top. You have discovered one of the coolest thought provoking objects available at any price. Bright enough to read by, the warm glow of a fireplace included.

Intensely Calming, Like a Purring Tiger

Snuggle up to an enlightening mood enhancer, the calming radiance of an oil lamp mated to terrible and confrontational Beauty, like staring into the face of God. Pure Geometry. Pure Physics. A Platonic solid cast in our own time, the Atomic Age, recapturing the magical effect electric lighting had in the Victorian Age. Electricity associated with the Life Force itself. A twitching frog leg was big news. The icosahedron is the only mathematical solution for distributing 20 light bulbs around a central hub. This is not design: it is Discovery.

The Brain:

Mad Science. Scare Your Friends. Sooth your Soul.

Your brain is a butterfly that doesn’t belong to you. Your life is my life is yours. Junk DNA codes a million memory years. “What the hell is this thing?“ A Brain. See inside: electronics. “Bulbohedron exploded?“ A Love Bomb. Sixty rivets left. Inside, a tormented jungle. Fifty feet of wire, all over the place, packaged in a subconscious inner space. Filaments aglowing, under your diabolical control. Chaotic. Hypnotic. Organic. Rational Insanity. A disembodied Intelligence. Optical bliss. How can a sense of calmness and completeness arise from such chaos?

How Many Light Bulbs Will It Take to Unscrew Your Stress?

Sixty! You’ll see that the disorder on the inside makes the order on the outside more triumphant. Examine closely the textured luxury of the deep red brown, canvas-reinforced composite hubs and struts, curving under dynamic, vibrational tension. They draw you in, for a closer look. Microscopic. The shear number of filaments, floating in space, right in front of you. That’s golden. Walk around it. The change in perspective is delightful, sparkling even, like a jewel. It’s not a lamp. It’s a diamond in the sky.

Light is Bright Time is Round and Space is Curved

Your brain begs you for that which is fun, which is new, which is infused with playful novelty. It’s also requires you to relax, to reconnect with Nature, to pursue that which is authentic, that which is real. Mr. Science has answers. The Age of Reason unearthed Mysteries orders of magnitude deeper than history could have ever even imagined. Are we alone in the Universe? What is matter? Does time even exist? Why 20 years of our hours dreaming? Nobody knows. Life is boring without Mystery. Worse, that in the face of the most beautiful world Mankind has ever been thrust into, idle minds are breeding discontent. Reclaim your right to dance your life away, righteously, in control of your own destiny. Your Brain belongs to you.

Prometheus:

Electric Sunrise in You-Topia

Imagine the perfect chair, the perfect glass of wine, and the perfect novel. Add Prometheus and you’ve got a perfect world. Rare it is when we come upon the right product. The resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual, and electrically prompt.

Glimmering Totem of Divine Symmetry

Observe a pound of shiny copper vines inside a scaffold, growing skyward to nourish fifty flower bulbs with glassblown pistils and tungsten stamens. Gossamer, sublime and erect. A molecule: a single flexible composite part, repeated a hundred times.

Bonfire of Pure Radiant Joy

There are parties. And then there’s Paradise. The Promised Lamp. Pleasure treasure for your tabletop. Self contained. Practically alive.

The Tube Lamp:

Vacuum Tube Status Amplifier

In hindsight, now that you know the story... you’ll understand how The Tube Lamp was designed as a tribute (spoof?) of contemporary and astonishingly high priced vacuum tube audio amplifiers. Whatever. The result was not as expected. Turned out to be a pure attitude fashion model. Glossy haught couture edginess projected into the room. Cooler than calming, more flirty than romantic. Mr. Science, lead astray by a new flame. A sly grin detected, being her chaperone at a Society party.

Sexy Little Black Box

Minimalist material fetish, an infrared phallic statement, a glamorous orgy of dildoic heat seeking missiles. Art deco meets art nouveau meets fabulous hostess. The box is Bakelite, the switch is chrome, the top is a mirror, and the knob has a dome. By original blueprinted tribute to audio amps, the knob, sought to this Earth’s end, is a factory replacement part, from a Fender Statocaster electric guitar. It might not make you a rock star, but it will make you a contender, in control of 225 watts of luxurious power.

Vanity Thy Name is Tube Lamp

Pretentiously cool with unprincipled gloss: a trophy. Do you blame yourself for falling in love with a diva? Of course not. She is youthfully devastating in vintage fashion, combined with black attack well healed boots. A fun-amplifier at parties or a pleasantly expensive date, but she’s a little, uh... how do I say it? You know the type. “What would life be without mystery?” Who cares. The real question is: what would it be like without challenge, adventure and fond memories? To hell with Philosophy this weekend. A Grammy lamp, not a granny lamp, its warm glow a bit too hot, and thus not one to take home to mom, but it sure looks great in your apartment.

The Glow Bug:

“Sweet Mystery of Light at Last I‘ve Found Thee...“

You are a living machine, full of electricity. The impenetrable mystery of life must be celebrated, not analyzed. I offer you my crazy and humbly megalomaniacal version of enlightenment. I make stuff. You buy stuff. Life is not Logic. Through action alone do we earn insight. In the glow of this Light you will see. You will see that Life is Good.
For you live in a Universe of Great Design.

“I know this world is ruled by Infinite Intelligence. It required Infinite Intelligence to create it and it require Infinite Intelligence to keep it on its course. Everything that surrounds us – everything that exists – proves that there are Infinite Laws behind it. There can be no denying this fact. It is mathematical in its precision.” - Thomas Alva Edison

Nik Willmore:

1965 • Born in St. Paul, MN to psychologist mother and physicist father, a year before the U.S.A. lands on the Moon.

1984 • Begins five years of undergraduate chemistry at U of MN.

1989 • Five years of benchtop organic synthesis at Columbia University in NYC. Takes to “doodling” during slow chemistry seminars of visiting professors, due to nervous restlessness. Sketches become a visual language, on their own. Receives American Chemical Society scholarship then graduates top in class (Hammet Award) with a Ph.D.

1995 • Three years at Harvard doing microfabrication research. Gives up “art project” due to plans to become a tenure track chemistry professor.

1998 • Insanity strikes. Realizes New York is paradise and he must return. Decision to give up art flips to decision to do art full time.
Two years of intense R&D, developing methods to turn India ink drawings into color paintings and reliefs. Invents 3D canvases which become sculptures in their own right.

2000 • A year of full time R&D, building a small “factory” to make lighting sculptures, after realizing that adding a bunch of electronics to his sculptures would be a fun thing to do.

2001 • Wraps up R&D (“money burning”) stage. Launches marketing effort and web site.